The present invention relates to the treatment or prevention of mastitis in warm-blooded animals in early lactation and/or with involuting mammary glands. The treatment utilizes recombinant cytokines.
The cytokines provide a useful therapy that significantly protects and treats the mammary gland from new or existing infections during the early stages of mammary gland involution, as well as during initiation of lactation. This therapy also improves milk production in subsequent lactation cycles. Contrary to immunization and vaccine approaches, the present invention optimizes the specific and non-specific defense mechanisms of the host to prevent the establishment of any new infections, as well as accelerating the normal physiological process of mammary gland involution. As such, the present invention is useful in effectively preventing and treating pathological infections of all mammals, but especially in milk-producing warm-blooded animals such as cattle, sheep, goats or buffalo. Furthermore, cytokine usage as an adjunct therapy with conventional antibiotic treatment of diseases is useful in decreasing incidence of new infections; improving efficacy; and/or decreasing the amount of antibiotic required for therapy, thereby reducing drug residue.
One such disease of commercial significance is mastitis, an inflammation of the mammary tissue. This disease has a variety of bacterial etiologies and causes great losses in milk production annually. Mammary gland infections are a useful model to study a variety of infectious diseases of organ systems of warm-blood animals, one of which is mastitis. Although intramammary antibiotic therapy is used in the lactating gland, one of the most effective mastitis therapies is intramammary infusion of antibiotics at the end of lactation (drying-off). This therapy can be quite efficacious in curing existing infections at the time of the drying-off.
Cytokines have a positive immunomodulatory effect on the host's immune system as well as influencing the normal biological processes of an involuting gland. The present invention significantly prevents the establishment and frequency of new bacterial infections in involuting mammary glands of mammals. Furthermore, as an adjunct to current antimicrobial therapy in the dry cow, the method of the present invention is useful in improving efficacy, reducing the dose of treatment and minimizing drug residues. Furthermore, the method of the present invention is effective against infections which have developed resistance to classical antimicrobial therapy.